This is Why V6 Mustang Drivers Are Asshats

About seven years ago when I was much more reckless and not very bright I lived in Portland OR. My fiance (at the time) and I moved up there after my Dad passed away because my cousin offered me a job doing NDT (Non Destructive Testing. AKA-magna fluxing and gamma radiography on ship hulls, pipe lines and the like) work. It was fine at first but I din't have a whole lot of friends other than a few co-workers. My fiance would go back down to Brookings about once a month to visit her parents for about week at a time leaving me all alone. I don't deal with just hanging out by myself very well, so I started going to this pool hall about a block away from my house. This is the story about the last time I ever went there.

I used to get real lonely when she'd take off. A lot of the times there I tried making some friends. You know, maybe a bar or pool hall buddy or two. Well, on this particular occasion I finally met a seemingly decent group of people. They liked the same kinda stuff I was interested in and seemed to generally like me. Nice! Up until this point, I hadn't made any friends that I hung out with outside of work, so things were looking up... until the bar closed.

So, the night still being young (2:30 in the a.m.) I decided to have an after party at my house. It was only about a block away and it wouldn't be that hard to drive there. As a matter of fact, you could exit the parking lot by making a right hand turn, then another and BANG! You're right in the parking lot to my appartment! How hard could this get?

Well, the Albertsons that's right friggin' there in the same parking lot as the bar stopped selling beer at 2:30. "Great. Well, I guess it's been a fun night..."

"Hold it right there, dude. We could run down the street to Seven Eleven. It's no problem at all."

"Are you sure? I don't want to, well... you know."

"No man. I'm good."

I should have taken my first hint as to what was gonna happen next by the choice of his car. 2001 Mustang. V6. I asked why the v6 as we were pulling to the light, getting ready to take a left towards Seven Eleven instead of taking a right to my place when he says, "This things got plenty of punch! Watch this!"

To my dismay, the light turned green and he started spinning the wheels, which would have been kinda cool, but it was wet out from a recent rain. As we were slowly pulling away, he started making the turn with the tires still spinning. All of a sudden, the rear end just let go completely and spun us 180*. I at the time was starting to get a little agitated. Not only was I stupid enough to get into a v6 Mustang with a drunk, he turned out to be a little bit on the weird side.

He tried to save it, but it swung out in the opposite direction spinning another 180, but this time it had a curb in the way. With all the momentum pent up inside this little pony of his, hitting the curb with his rimz, it jettisoned us into an imprompt barrel roll over the curb, through a chain link fence, and shiny side down in the shallows of a pond on a golf course.

The first thing he said to me was, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I think so... WTF, man? What the hell were you thinking?"

The next thing he said to me was, "Run."

"What?"

"Run, GODAMMIT!"

Okay... I got my self un-buckled and started out through the windshield after him. I started to catch up. He started to call someone on his phone as I approached. The next sentence out of his mouth I will never forget, "It happened again..."

He was on the phone with his attorney. For real. The guy ended up meeting us in the parking lot of the golf course. He told me that I had never seen him or his client. If I agreed with that, he'd drop me off at my house. I said, "What ever. Just take me home. It's been a long night..."

I got to my appartment and instictively started getting undressed to go to bed, but I started to get the beer munchies. I decided to walk down to the grocery store and get myself something to eat. Before I walked out the front door, I noticed that my back pocket didn't feel right... "No. No way. Couldn't be", were the thoughts that went through my head. But alas, I had indeed left my wallet at the scene of an accident.

I walked right down there into the lights and sirens, past the police and sheriff deputies and started to go through the car. A young officer came up to me and asked me what I was doing. "Looking for my wallet," I replied.

To his amazement he asked, "you were in this car?!"

"Uh, yeah..."

"Is this your's?!" he shouted.

"Ha! Hell no. Like I'd own a v6 Mustang..."

I explained that the reason that I had indeed ran was, "because this idiot drove us onto a golf course, and just being in one of the most frightening accidents I've ever been in, I was a little scared. I didn't know what the hell he would have done if I didn't. Oh yeah, he called his attorney saying something about, 'it happened again'..."

The officer thought that a story that crazy had to be true and ended up giving me a ride home. The next day I was really hung over. As I was digging around the clothes that I had tossed about in my drunken stupor, I lifted my hat and found... yeah, my wallet.

Fortunately, there is a moral to this story that I can take with me and teach to my kids and anyone else I happen to share my story with: Never, EVER get into a car with some one that's been drinking. Or a pre 2011 v6 Mustang.

Bringing Not So Sexy Back

About a week ago, my fantastic wife said to me, "hey, you want to drive over to Medford to get your truck back?"

I imediatly said, "really?!"

"Yeah. You deserve it. Besides, we need a second vehicle to get you to and from work."

Well, at least that's how it goes in my head.

Let's start with a little background first- I used to have a really awesome (but really ugly) '85 Dodge Ram Charger. It's got an old crate engine 318 with an Edelbrock intake and carb, long tube headers and some sort of non-descript cam. It was a fantastic truck. It would go where ever you pointed it, and was one of the most reliable trucks out of all my friends. Also it was built before Chrysler decided they need to build a lot of suck into their truck devision.

Everything was great up until gas started to skyrocket. Before long, we couldn't aford to put gas in it. The tags were about to go out of date and the old Thornbird tires I had on it were starting to crack. So it sat in the front of my house for months while I tried to sell it. I bought it for $1200 initially, which was the same price I was trying to sell it at. Sounded reasonable to me. Unfortunately, nobody else did. This is where my buddy Big Mike comes in to play.

Mike's been a great friend of mine for quite some time. I told him that I had to get rid of the truck because we were moving (forgot to mention that!) over to Medford. I decided to just give it to him. It needed new tires, a battery, fuel and new tags. If he could do all that, I'd just give it to him. There was one condition-I got first dibs if he decided to get rid of it or sell it. He agreed.

So, back to the story at hand. We decided to take the trip over there monday on my payday (which also happens to be my only day off). Of course, the checks were late once again (screw you, UPS!), which threw us off by several hours. I needed to get over there early because Mike had told me that the truck needed a new fuel pump and I wanted time to actually work on it.

The check didn't come in until noon, so we didn't leave for Medford until 1pm. Awesome. The journey over went without a hitch, so that was nice, but we didn't arrive until about 4ish. Mike and I imediatly went to work on the truck. I tried to get underneath it in his back yard, but I didn't appreciate the giant fucking weeds with giant fucking spikes all over them stabbing me in the spleen, so we rolled it onto the street. It's amazing how comfortable laying on your back on the concrete feels after laying on a bed of natures own nails.

The job looked fairly straight forward enough. It was a mechanical fuel pump, so it's not in the tank, but on the block. As a matter of fact, it's right behind the alternator bracket. Mike had suggested that we remove the alternator for the ease of replacing the pump, but why the hell would I want to do things the easy way? I enjoy moving a wrench one micron at a time. We kept the alternator on, and things were slow going and frustrating, just the way any easy looking project should be.

We got every thing off, replaced the pump and installed a new fuel line from the filter to the carb because the old one was well, old and in need of replacing. We picked up some gas from a local station to prime the carb and also to put in the tank because Mike had ran it out of gas the precious time he tried to start it.

Once we were certain that every thing was hooked up, I got in the cab and Mike primed the carb. Things got off with a roar, as the Ram Charger came to life with an exhaust note that sounds like the four horsemen of the appocalypse raping a grizzly bear that's been gargling broken glass. A truly life altering sound that turns mice into men and drops the IQ of every one within the range of one mile. Too bad that it wouldn't stay running. After almost an hour of priming, starting, dieing, wash, rinse, repeat, the battery gave up the ghost. Even though we had a fresh battery waiting in the wings, the women and children were supposedly starving. We decided to give up for the day, and try it in about a week or two when I can get some more time to come back.

We haven't narrowed down the problem just yet, but considering it was getting fuel aft of the pump, but not aft of the filter (which happens to be brand spankin' new), I figure that it's either a directional filter and we put it on wrong in all the hullabalu, or it's already clogged for one reason or another. Eventually I will get it started, and I will get it back to Brookings. Eventually.